Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Personal tools
Sections
You are here: Home Breaking news Eurozone jobless hits fresh record amid anti-austerity ire

Eurozone jobless hits fresh record amid anti-austerity ire

30 April 2013, 16:52 CET
— filed under: ,
Eurozone jobless hits fresh record amid anti-austerity ire

Enrico Letta

(BRUSSELS) - European unemployment hit a fresh record in March with more than 19 million people out of work as Italy's new premier Enrico Letta added his voice to calls for an end to punishing austerity in favour of policies to spur growth.

As recession continues to sap the eurozone and wider EU, the Eurostat data agency Tuesday reported an extra 62,000 people joining unemployment queues in just four weeks in the 17-nation eurozone as the jobless rate climbed for the 23rd consecutive month -- hitting 12.1 percent in March.

The frightening new figures, notably showing one out of four under-25s on the dole -- almost two in three in Greece and Spain -- come amid increasingly vocal criticism over the effects on jobs of the cost-cutting measures pushed by Germany and other austerity advocates.

After calls from France for a switch, Italy's Letta faces an early test of his vow to reverse a policy he says is extinguishing his country's economic growth when he meets German Chancellor Angela Merkel later in the day.

"Italy is dying from austerity alone. Growth policies cannot wait," he said in his first policy speech to parliament.

He won swift support from the German Socialist head of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, who said in a message to Italy that "today, more than ever, Europe needs a bold Italy."

"Austerity is suffocating not only Italy but also many eurozone countries," he added, calling for "urgent measures to give oxygen to the economy and give back hope to young people."

But in a message of congratulations to Letta on Tuesday, European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso appeared to toe Berlin's line despite having admitted last week that austerity may have reached its limits due to a lack of political and social support.

"I am ... certain that I can rely on your commitment to carry on the process of necessary reforms," he wrote.

There have been signs nonetheless of a softening on austerity after Brussels this week agreed to give Spain more time to meet deficit targets and the EU agreed to extend loan repayment terms to Portugal and Ireland.

Yet across Europe anger is rising against austerity as hard economic data fails to show a turn-around.

Greece, the eurozone nation hardest hit by unemployment, saw joblessness climb relentlessly to 27.2 percent in January, the latest available figures, from 26.3 percent in December.

Last weekend, the Greek parliament agreed to fire another 14,000 civil servants as part of the belt-tightening measures demanded in return for EU-IMF bailouts.

Meanwhile Portugal, another bailed-out nation facing one of the eurozone's sharpest rises in unemployment -- 17.5 percent in March against 15.1 percent in February -- was seeking to agree new austerity measures after its Constitutional Court rejected as discriminatory cuts to civil servant salaries and pensions decided in response to demands by EU-IMF lenders.

In Cyprus, which saw a huge month-to-month rise in unemployment to 14.2 percent against 10.7 percent the previous month, the parliament was to debate the terms of a tough 10-billion-euro EU-IMF bailout.

Across the full 27-nation EU, Tuesday's data showed a total 26.5 million people out of work last month, or 10.9 percent, with 69,000 extra workers on the dole in March.

"Unemployment in Europe remains unacceptably high," said the EU's employment and social affairs commissioner Laszlo Andor of the dramatic year-on-year rise. A year earlier joblessness stood at 11.0 percent in the eurozone and 10.3 percent in the European Union.

In comparison, unemployment in the United States was at 7.6 percent in March and 4.3 percent in Japan in February.

"The gap between the countries with the highest and lowest jobless rates remains extremely high," Andor added, calling for demand-side interventions such as a lower taxes, structural reforms and training.

The lowest unemployment rates were in Austria, which saw a slight fall to 4.7 percent and in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, where it remained unchanged at 5.4 percent.

But the greatest cause for concern lay with youth unemployment.

In March, 24 percent of under-25s were jobless in the eurozone, and 23.5 percent in the 27-nation EU against 22.5 percent and 22.6 percent a year earlier, respectively.

In Greece it soared to a whopping 59.1 percent in January, the latest available figure, and hit 55.9 percent in Spain, 38.4 percent in Italy and 38.3 percent in Portugal.

"Youth unemployment has potentially disastrous consequences, especially if it prolongs, as young people can be cut off not only from the labour market but from society as a whole," Commissioner Andor added.

"EU institutions and governments, business and social partners at all levels need to do all they can to avoid a 'lost generation'".

Euro area unemployment rate at 12.1% [Eurostat]


Document Actions